


The Mantis

by angelaiswriting (carolinemoore)



Series: Larisa [2]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Bad Dirty Talk, Dirty Talk, Dirty Thoughts, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Flirting, Implied Sexual Content, Mentions of Death, Mentions of Masturbation, Sexual Content, Sexual Tension, Slow Burn, Smut, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Vaginal Fingering, mentions of female sterilization, mentions of killing, mentions of torture, non-described fem!OC
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-04
Updated: 2019-04-04
Packaged: 2020-01-04 18:55:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,080
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18349682
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/carolinemoore/pseuds/angelaiswriting
Summary: Larisa Efimovna Goncharova, sister-like friend of Natasha Romanoff and former KGB agent, is Clint Barton’s personal sexual fantasy and frustration. Ten years after the last time he saw her, back when he and Nat had chased her around Moldova first and Hungary later, he meets her again at one of Tony’s parties and both his memories and lust come back full force.





	The Mantis

**Author's Note:**

> This is the prelude to a (hopefully as long) part two!
> 
> It's also my first time writing Clint (or Nat), so I hope it's not too OOC. Feel free to let me know and/or suggest me changes to make about their characterization for future works if I got them wrong, though!

**THE MANTIS**

 

Clint hadn’t seen her in forever, ever since the Chișinău fiasco, which had been… too long ago to even accidentally think about it once or twice a year. He had never forgotten about her, though–he couldn’t have even if he had wanted to. He had been knuckles deep inside her and a breath away from coming in his boxers when she had looked up at him with those eyes, mouth hanging open as no sound slipped out of it.

But she had been behind enemy lines back then, before Nat found her again in the Hungarian outskirts and brought her on her side. ‘Back together again like in the old days,’ his friend had chanted, much to his surprise, with a smirk on her lips. For as much as he wanted to state the opposite, he still didn’t exactly know what the two girls’ ‘old days’ had been like. Sure, there must have been killing and spying and all that jazz, but, so far, he had never managed to tear the details of their private life out of Natasha’s mouth.

 _So good to see you, Nasha_ , he managed to read on the woman’s lips before he lost track of what language she was speaking with his friend.

He stared as the two women embraced, kissed each other’s cheeks and then clinked their flutes to cheer.

Those lips… Tinted in a deep-burgundy shade, they curled into a smile and did their best to remind him how close he had been to having them wrapped around something more than just his index and middle fingers.

Christ, Chișinău had been a fiasco on more than one level and that was for sure!

Did she really have to come?

 _Come_.

Ha!

She had come hard around his fingers that night and to this day, Clint swore he could still feel the walls of her vagina clamp down on him. Much to his dismay.

Behind him, Sam whistled. It was low and long and it felt like a sting in his ears. “Who’s the doll with Natasha?”

 

*

 

_“Looks like a doll. With a face like hers, no surprise she’s managed to trick so many people.” Clint chuckled low in his throat as he stared at the photo the file of their mission had been equipped with._

_There was a girl staring back at him–skin like that of a baby, eyes like those of a doll, cold and glassy and ruthless._ Emotionless _. The same expression he had seen in Nat’s picture when he had been sent to get rid of her, the same expression that had made him fear she didn’t have a chance in his world._

_Larisa Efimovna Goncharova had, at first glance, looked like the woman of his dreams and that of his nightmares both at the same time. Her face was pleasant to look at and deeper into the mission, Clint Barton would discover how pleasant to look at her body was, too. And yet, there were nightmarish shadows behind the grey of her eyes, crawling behind the stoic expression the photographer had eternalized on film._

_Natasha hummed. She had just got out of the shower and droplets of water dripped down her hair and onto her shoulders when, body hugged by a tan towel, she exited the run-down bathroom of the even more run-down motel they had booked a room at. “Face like a doll, tongue like a bitch.”_

_“You know her?”_

_“Oh, yeah.” There was an amused smile on her lips when he turned to glance at her, a smile that seemed to go back in time. “Been my friend since the beginning.” Her breath hitched in her throat then and she shook her head slightly. “Or as much of a friend as we could be to each other. ‘Grew up with her’ is more like it. She had my back and I had hers.”_

_“Any chance this could compromise the mission?”_

_“Nah.”_

 

*

 

“Wouldn’t call her ‘doll’ if I were you,” Clint answered back. He had learned that the hard way and while he was dying to see Sam go downstairs and get all beaten up, he truly didn’t want the guy to have a chance with her. He had unfinished business with the Mantis, one he would have been happy to see through.

His friend leaned against the balcony and pretended to scan the crowd of wealthy stuck-ups that had graced Tony Stark’s umpteenth charity party with their presence and wallets. “Looks like someone I wouldn’t mind having in my bed tonight,” he smirked and at the sight, Clint answered him with an exasperated eye roll.

“Careful, she might bite.”

Sam let out a long  _oooh_  that caught the attention of many a guest for a brief couple of seconds before they all went back to minding their business. “I’m all in for the kinky stuff.”

“In the literal way.”

“Even better!” The guy’s smirk spread wider and the glint in his eyes got more mischievous at that warning. Give him a chance and he would be strolling down the glass stairs to the lower floor to try his cards with her.

Clint had to unclench his jaw, which he had somehow been subconsciously tightening. “Do you know why they call her  _The Mantis_?” He didn’t want to play dirty, not with his buddies, but this… This was beyond him. This wasn’t something he could control. It was something that was resurfacing after almost a decade of his best attempts at ignoring the matter and now that she was here, in the most revealing silk dress, with a slit that cut her side from hip all the way down to the stiletto jewel sandals she was wearing, he wasn’t going to let his chance at ending up between her legs– _at finishing his unfinished business_ –slip away. “She lures men and then she kills them.”

“Can’t be that bad if she’s here now, can she?”

“Nat is still lethal; what makes you think  _she_  is anything but, now?”

 

*

 

_They had been following Larisa’s traces for a couple of days when they found the first corpse._

_A man in his thirties, who at first glance looked like the most boring rich ass you could find in good, ol’ Chișinău, had been found dead in his five-star hotel room. There was a single cut on his body and it traced a clean line across his throat, going from ear to ear. Stark naked, with an unused condom still on, he had been left with an expensive Rolex on his right wrist and a suitcase full of money in the bedside table._

_“What? Admiring the job?” Clint scoffed. Sometimes Nat truly knew how to be weird: she was scanning the dead’s wound with the faintest of smirks painted on her lips and a hand on her hip._

_She shrugged her shoulders and only turned to face him after half a minute. “Lara has always been the best at dramatic effects,” she said, pointing at the dead KGB agent left in a pool of his own blood on the otherwise pristine-white bed sheets. “They tried to make her stop, but I guess they never succeeded. She comes, she seduces you, takes what she wants, and then…” Natasha never finished her sentence, for its ending was clear. “I used to call her_ Номер Один _–Number One. She was the best, even better than me.”_

_Clint stared at his friend for a while, contemplating the details she had just delivered, and chose not to twist the knife. It was almost as though all those little details were coming up slowly, one after the other, prompted by the random events they were–and soon would be, for their mission was far from over–facing on the way to their target._

_They still needed to understand if the Mantis had taken anything from the crime scene, though, for_ anything _could be helpful and lead them to her den. He told her that much, but Natasha simply laughed._

_“Oh, she took something. Lara always does.” She was amused and looked around the room like a curious child trying to understand if what lies before her eyes is true or a mere hallucination. “I’m not sure if it can help, though.”_

_“And why’s that?”_

_“Because dear Agent KGB here is dead and unless SHIELD has some device that reads dead people’s minds, we’re done here.”_

 

*

 

Clint had been staring at her ever since she had approached Nasha–and that was almost an hour, an hour and a half tops ago. And Lara was perfectly aware of it–she had almost  _counted_  on it when Natasha had sent her the invitation to that charity party. Not that she had  _legal_ money to give, be it clear; and even if she  _did_  have money to waste like that, she was sure she wouldn’t be  _willing_  to do it.

The opportunity to finally see her friend–her  _sister_ -like friend–, though, had been something she hadn’t been willing to let slip through her fingers. They had met sporadically ever since she had been arrested and then converted by SHIELD nine and a half years ago and while Nick Fury, who now seemed to control her life, did his best to keep the two former Russian spies away from each other, they always found a way to sneak around. And tonight’s event wasn’t any different, nor had been the preparation that had lead to it.

Nasha had met her a week before to go dress-hunting with her boss’ borrowed money, if so one could say, and Lara hadn’t been able to tell her ‘no’. She needed a day out with someone she could call a ‘friend’ just as she needed to be considered a person again and not just a weapon of global instability. Not that she had well known how it felt to be treated as a person, let alone as a  _woman_ : she had been an instrument of destruction first, a spy secondly, and third, the closest thing to a person she could have been  _without_  actually being a person. And in regards to being a woman, they had robbed her of the chance to feel like one ages ago.

But Clint… He had surprised her by playing her same game, back in Moldova. He had circled her like a predator, studied her moves, her tricks, anticipated her cards…

She had never been touched like that, neither by a man nor a woman. And while she had had far more important things to do–things she used to be  _paid_  for–, all she had been able to do was surrender as he tried to trick her into her capture. He hadn’t taken anything from her–he probably would have, had he been given the chance to, but she hadn’t given him the time to let him play her as he pleased, for she had managed to snap out of her dream-like state, his thumb on her clit, and she had hit him unconscious.

He had still managed to catch her, a couple of weeks later, and it had been  _then_  that she had seen Nasha for the first time after the death of their youth. And with the time she had been given in America–time to study who had once been her enemies, time to learn the little details about their lives and all their dirty secrets–, she had managed to come to a conclusion: where Natalya was, Clint Barton could be found, too, and vice versa.

This had been her hope. When she had chosen the champagne silky dress she was wearing tonight, she hadn’t planned on trying to seduce the man. Of course not. But she had been wishing to meet him again, to give him a nice, long look, and if fate would have it for her to relive in her memory even a second of what he had given her so many years before, she would go back home content.

And if anything, Clint Barton had been the first man to touch her that hadn’t died.

 

*

 

_Lara had been expecting for someone to track her down. She had been in the business for longer than she could remember and she knew what to expect from people like herself. And even more so after going rogue: she had made sure to get rid of the people that had hurt and manipulated her in the Red Room, she had subdued the KGB agents and former agents that had kept her a prisoner to a painful death, and was now continuing on that path for the people that paid her enough._

_It had never been for money, though. At first, it had been for glory._ The Glory _, with a capital G. It had always been an abstract concept made concrete by her child-like dreams: become the heroine of the story, defeat the Baba Yaga and her Zmey Gorynych, marry the prince, become the queen. The only thing she had gained out of all those killings was a name–‘the Mantis’, like the mantis that killed the males she copulated with._

 _She had been meditating on her non-existent glory when the man she later discovered went under the name of Clint Barton–or_  agent  _Barton when the truth got revealed–approached her. Her eyes had been scanning the crowd to find her next target, one she hadn’t been paid to kill for the simple fact that this was a_ personal  _issue, and so she had been caught by surprise by a hand on the middle of her back._

_The music and chatter of the party disappeared from around her as all senses focused on that contact and on the calm breathing she felt on the back of her exposed neck._

_Unknowingly to Clint, this had been a first. Too engrossed in her own personal revenge and bloodthirst, Larisa Goncharova hadn’t detected the approaching man like she would have had it been another circumstance._

_“Lovely party,” the man said, voice low and sweet._

_She could feel him behind her; his cologne tickled her nostrils even with her back staring at him. It took her a minute at most to calm her heart and to force it to match her even breathing before she turned around with a smile on her face. It was a smile she had mastered in her younger years, back there in the Red Room, the same smile she had often graced her friend Natalya with. “Not from Moldova,” she pointed out, “nor from Romania, are you?”_

_The man chuckled and his eyes seemed to sparkle under the lights of the rich crystal chandeliers hanging in the immense ballroom of the mansion. He clinked his glass with hers before speaking. “What gave me away?” he wanted to know and reverted back to English, hoping she did, in fact, speak his language._

_Or, at least,_ she  _thought it to be his hope, for Clint knew almost everything there was to know about her._

_“Your accent, the way you pronounce your Rs…” She shrugged, accent thick, taking a sip of champagne and never breaking eye contact. “And you look… foreign, like you’re not from around here.”_

_“Oh, is that so?” He cocked an eyebrow, head tilting slightly to the side as he stared at her and matched her smile with one of his._

_Lara nodded, circling the rim of her glass with her forefinger, red nail polish glimmering in the lights of the party. She didn’t often wear red, it screamed like a stain of blood on an otherwise immaculate white shirt, but_ he _loved red,_ Todorovsky _. And if she wanted to get her revenge and make him pay, she had to make sure to play_ all _of her cards and she had to play them right. But Todorovsky had yet to show up–if he ever would, tonight–and so she had time for a little distraction and fun._

_And as she hooked her arm around his extended one, silently accepting his invitation to dance, she had no idea how huge of a distraction that was going to be._

 

*

 

“So, how’s Fury been treating you?”

Natasha was stunning in her sleek black dress. It put just the right amount of cleavage on display and left almost nothing of her legs to the imagination as it ended a few inches above her knees. She felt daring tonight and Lara knew it. It had been like that between the two of them, they had helped each other perfecting the art of male seduction ever since they had been given a chance.

“Sometimes I think he believes me to be a kid,” she snorted, leaning against the back of a leather couch to stand beside her friend. “Which is… utter bullshit, if you really want my opinion. But it’s also honestly better than I would have imagined when I let you handcuff me in Hungary, so it’s more than I could ask for.”

They both chuckled and they both kept silent as they emptied their flutes.

“Do you ever think of…” Nasha trailed off, gaze lost in the distance as she stared out of the huge window wall that gave on Manhattan Bridge.

“Of when you used to give me head? Oh yeah, all the time,” Lara laughed. She knew where her friend was trying to go, but she wasn’t ready to go back there yet, so she resolved on blabbering out the first thing that came to her mind.

Much to her relief, her red-haired friend laughed, throwing her head back and showcasing the sparkling necklace that hugged her neck like a choker. “Still the best head of your life, I hope.”

She playfully smacked the other on the arm as she noticed Clint staring at them from the corner of her eye. “Now, now, Romanoff, don’t flatter yourself too much. It was an eight on a scale from one to ten.”

“You can hide the truth from me all you want, but I know what the truth is…”

Lara shook her head in amusement and her gaze slid down her body and to the slit of her dress. She smirked, then, a sudden and childish idea popping up in her mind, and she moved her left leg so that it was more on display. In the distance, still staring at him from the corner of her left eye, she thought she saw Clint swallow as with a hand he adjusted the tightness of his tie.

It took her a moment to notice Natasha had picked up on something and when she looked up at her friend, she found her staring past her with a smirk on her face. It was a smirk she knew all too well: it was the first thing that had welcomed her back in her dorm when she came back from a successful training session when they were kids and it was also Nat’s natural response to her having nasty details to share.

“I’m glad you chose this dress,” she commented eventually, meeting her gaze once again. Nasha was like that: she always had plans forming in her mind, for she always knew what to look for in any situation, her expert and attentive gaze always centering the target. “I’ve seen many a man ogling you.” Her smirk got bigger then and she shrugged a shoulder. “A couple women, too.”

“Might be because I tried to kill one or two of the people present here in the past, might be the hitman charm.” A wide grin on her face, she innocently played with her hair for a few seconds before both women burst out laughing. “I’ve seen people stare at you, too. Hopefully, you haven’t found yourself in compromising situations with anyone here.”

Nasha simply smiled. She moved away from the couch to replace their empty flutes with full ones from a passing waiter before she glanced at her sideways, grinning a knowing grin. “Oh, I’m not the one who’s found herself with a SHIELD agent’s fingers up her pussy. And if it can help you, Barton is single and very much on the market.”

Lara only managed to gasp in half-mock shock as her friend walked away.

 

*

 

_The stranger had managed to push her deeper into the mansion, past doors that should have been kept locked until he found a secluded-enough corner he could trap her into. And now, his lips and tongue on her neck felt like a cool bliss in the stuffy summer air._

_Her hands were in his hair before she had the time to realize so, her head leaning back against the wall she was being pressed against. It was a nice change of scenery, seen as she was usually the one to kiss and lick and touch men to lure them into her trap._

_The real deal was that the men she hunted were… She didn’t know. They wanted it fast and they wanted it now and as long as she got what she wanted out of it, she was alright with skipping the build-up. They did her as they pleased and in the process, she tore the intel she needed from them–in the recurring case where she needed a contact with them to grab what she wanted and her mission wasn’t just a clean killing._

_But this…_

Fuck _._

_This man’s mouth on her felt like heaven. It made her dizzy, her mind foggy, her legs boneless as he suckled marks in the crook of her neck, her chest rising and falling at an almost bruising pace following her ragged breathing._

_Yeah, she could kill Todorovsky another time, she decided. There was time for that, while this… this could disappear into thin air if only she said no._

_She tugged on his short, brown hair, pulled his head back until she could stare into his eyes and before she could think that this was the wrong decision, that she was stupidly falling into a trap, she kissed him._

_Lara had never been kissed._

_It wasn’t exactly true, for she_ had _been kissed. It had never been like this, though. She had never kissed someone she didn’t plan nor want to kill, so this was as unexpected as Todorovsky’s absence at the party. It was slow and hungry and she could feel him pressing himself against her, settled between her legs, the gown of her dress bunched up into his fists as he slowly lulled his hips against hers._

_She imagined that this was how his victims felt when she played with them like a cat with a mouse. And for once, her mind was devoid of any thought. There was just this American-sounding man, with his piercing blue eyes and his needy hands and his burning mouth._

_And she loved every second of it. So much so that when he gently sucked on her tongue, she moaned long and low from the back of her throat, her skin suddenly on fire, her dress unexpectedly constricting as she fought to breathe._

_Before she could fathom it, he had slipped a hand between their bodies and had caressed her core from above her panties. Her heart skipped a beat and her eyes shot open and when he found her staring, he shot her a smirk._

_His face inched closer with every swipe of his fingers along her labia, caressing her through the dampening lace of her panties. And the closer he got, the clearer his breath on her skin felt, until he was lapping again at her collarbone. It was then that he slipped his hand below the hem of her lingerie and she gasped again when the fingertip of his middle finger pressed against her clit and he stopped his hand’s descent to massage her gently._

_His touch sent her mind onto another astral plane, or at least this was how she felt at the moment. The last time someone had touched her like this had been at the Red Room Academy when Natalya had tried to teach her a trick or two. To have a man touch her like this, though… It was something else entirely, and even more so when said man sucked the skin below her ear with hungry lips and rocked himself against her thigh._

_He was inside her before she could ask him to. First one finger, then two, and they stretched her muscles in the most mind-blowing way as he moved to stare down at her gaping mouth. She was too breathless to even whimper, let alone moan, and the glint in the man’s eyes at the realization was mischievous._

_“Tell me to stop,” he murmured against her lips, gently nibbling them._

_She felt like she was going to faint, to pass out because the temperature of the room–or of her body–had spiked up too high for her to endure it. “Please, no,” she gasped. And it didn’t matter that she could come off as needy and whiny because as long as she was going to get it, then it would be worth it._

_It wasn’t clear how they ended up there, then, but the man suddenly had two fingers in her mouth and she was sucking on them. It all helped in building her up and Lara could feel herself being shot up to the fucking Moon when his fingers curled a little more, pressing against that sweet spot that made her go crazy._

_Before the man had any chance to actually comprehend how close she was to coming, she tumbled over the edge, her eyes closing as her head fell forward, his fingers ending up deeper in her throat for a second before he had the chance to remove them._

_Then, just as she wondered how the fuck no man had ever done that to her, she realized she shouldn’t be doing this, not with this stranger that had crept up on her like he had, not when she should be killing someone else._

_She hit him in the head before he had the time to slip his fingers out of her throbbing core and gasped when he fell to her feet._

 

*

 

“Lara, Steve. Steve, Lara.” Nasha’s voice brought her back to reality and all she could do was nod and show off a shy smile as all blood rushed to her cheeks: Clint was there.

The man she knew as Captain America stretched his hand out and it took her a second to realize it and to shake it.

“And I’m Sam!”

“Yeah, ignore him, he can be a pain in the ass.”

Lara chuckled at her friend’s words. In her defense, it should be said that she did her best not to, but it was impossible seeing the funny expression on the man’s face.

“I’m pretty sure you already know Clint.” Natasha’s smirk could have given her away, but no one seemed fazed by it as the assassin playfully squeezed Clint’s forearm.

She nodded. “Agent Barton.”

“Larisa.”

They shook hands and it took them longer than it should have to realize she was holding the hand he had used to finger her so many years ago. She averted her gaze and her eyes landed on none other than Tony Stark.

Fury had told him anything there was to know about her and she knew it. She still didn’t know why, exactly, he had felt like spilling all that information to the least trustworthy man in the whole Avengers squad, but she guessed it didn’t matter. What mattered, though, was that Tony Stark hadn’t personally invited her and had found her on his guest list only because Natasha had done anything in her power to put her on it.

“Miss Goncharova! I’ve heard  _a lot_  about you.”

She was forced to shake hands once again and it was something she hadn’t exactly been used to before stepping through enemy ranks.

“I could say the same about you, Mr. Stark.” The tone of her voice was unsure and she nervously glanced at Nasha in search of some source of safety. “Enchanting party.”

“Nothing like what you must have been used to, though, I fear.”

Lara studied his face, focused on his half-smirk, on his perfect hair, and she did her best to avoid the glowing thing he had in his chest. “Different,” she admitted then, thinking back at Chișinău, “but not bad. Your guests are… charming.”

Her gaze landed on Clint again as she spoke the last word–not because she had intended to, but simply because the man was digging holes in the side of her face. And truth be told, she wanted to make sure he was staring because, sure as hell, she couldn’t take him out of her mind, not after having fleetingly seen in a month ago. He had been helping Nasha train some new SHIELD recruits and she had just so happened to pass by the gym facility. A look at him in his stealth suit and her breath had caught in her throat, much to her assassin impassibility.

“That’s one way to put it,” the man who had introduced himself as Sam chuckled.

She smiled at him, falling back into her usual silence.

It was weird to think of them as people, even after almost a decade spent working for them behind the scenes. She knew them as Iron Man, as Falcon, as  _Hawkeye_. It wasn’t like with Natasha: they had grown up together, lived through the same experiences, earned nicknames and abilities side by side. She had always been Natalya before being Black Widow and she had always been Larisa before becoming Mantis. Even in the fucked-up system of the Red Room first and that of the KGB later, it had always been easier.

“Join us for a drink?” Falcon continued.

“Don’t let him sneak into your panties,” Nasha snickered in Russian and Lara saw Clint hold in a chuckle of his own.

“Who said I won’t be slipping into his?” she smirked, eyes fixed on Agent Barton as she followed Sam to the bar.

 

*

 

_He had insisted on going to that stupid party on his own as Nat studied the tracks to find a way to get to the Mantis before it was too late and without her suspecting anything, but now, as he made his way out of the villa with a throbbing bump on the back of his head, he couldn’t but groan and curse under his breath._

_It had been a childish mistake–going solo, that is. He had insisted: he could do this on his own, find out information without Natasha’s presence, which could endanger the whole mission if Goncharova sniffed even the faintest trace of who, exactly, was following her. It was too an important a mission: Fury had delayed it far too long and had sent the wrong agents on the field before agreeing on sending agents Barton and Romanoff. Natasha’s knowledge of the target could have come in handy, SHIELD’s director had reasoned, and it could have all come in handy, for she could lure the Mantis into a trap of her own._

_But then Clint had seen Larisa’s picture, staring at him from the file of the mission, and he had thought–why not? Why not push his luck and see if he could get the upper hand using her same tricks?_

_He hadn’t expected her to fall apart before him like that, though, his hand inside her panties, her mouth wrapped around his fingers. He had stared into those ruthless eyes and had watched their stony façade melt away. A shiver had run down his spine and he had felt himself twitch in his briefs._

_He had blacked out for a couple of minutes_ at most _, probably, because when he had woken up on the floor of the room he had pushed the girl into, he had found himself to be its only occupant. There had been no tangible trace of his target’s presence–and no hope he could finish his business–, just a piece of toilet paper with a “I’m sorry” scribbled on it in a hurried handwriting._

_“You look like a ghost,” Nat chuckled when he joined her in their motel room again._

_Clint groaned, swiftly discarding his clothes as he walked in the direction of the bathroom. He was in no mood to talk, not with the feel of Goncharova’s tongue on and around his fingers. His lips were still tingling from when he had kissed her–her lips, her skin, her neck._

_“I guess this means that she played you just right?”_

_He turned to stare at his partner as he stepped into the shower, his face set in a frown, too pissed and shocked to even acknowledge the woman’s grin. He grunted, drawing the curtain of the shower closed with a jerk of his arm before he let out an irritated ‘fuck, yes.’_

_There was an unspoken ‘I told you so’ in Nat’s expression, in her posture as she leaned against the frame of the door. She didn’t utter it, and he didn’t press for her to say it, but truth was, even if unspoken, it was there and it was true. Much to his pride._

_“Don’t beat yourself up,” he heard her say. “She tricked me, too, once.”_

 

*

 

Clint didn’t exactly know why, but the thought of Larisa doing with Nat the nasty things he wanted to do to  _her_  had him hard in a matter of minutes when his memories when back to Chișinău.

The former KGB assassin, now SHIELD agent was standing next to Sam, far closer than he had deemed appropriate in an elegant situation like tonight’s, and he couldn’t help but stare. He stared at her hand, resting against his friend’s bicep, at her flirty smile, at her left leg, that she had moved between Sam’s in a seemingly innocent fashion. It was her bare leg, the one that was put on display by the slit in her dress, and he found himself following her flesh from hip to ankle with hungry eyes.

He didn’t know why he felt so drawn to her, why his mind kept going back to Moldova and to the things he had been doing to her before she hit him in the back of the head. He had so successfully managed to push her out of his thoughts, to ignore Nat’s lingering jokes on the matter, and now he truly didn’t know why it was all crumbling down to his feet.

Hers wasn’t the first naked leg he saw, her bare back wasn’t the first his eyes had fallen upon at one of Stark’s parties–heck, he had seen Nat naked plenty a time and it had never had that effect on him. For fuck’s sake, he had seen naked women all his life, but it was  _her_  hardened nipples he could see through the silk of her dress and it was those same nipples he was staring at with clenched teeth.

“You remember when I told you how I used to call Lara ‘ _Номер_ _Один_ ’?” Natasha whispered in his ear, her lips ghosting against his skin as she moved to stand by his side. “She was the number one in many things and fields,” she went on without waiting for an answer on his part and Clint slightly tilted his head to the side to look at her from the corner of his eye. “She started ballet at the age of three.”

Clint raised a brow. “Yeah?”

Nat nodded. “Her mother had been  _prima ballerina_  at the Bolshoi before she was involved in a car crash. Her dream died, but then she realized she had a daughter and that she could carry it to completion–become Russia’s greatest ballerina.”

“And you’re telling me this because…”

“Because I know what she’s doing,” the woman grinned. She pointed at Larisa with a jerk of her chin and she sipped from her new whiskey on the rocks. “She’s always been our  _Номер_ _Один_  when it came to body language and how to use it–how to  _exploit_  it. Why do you think she became who she is?”

He turned his head to fully stare at his friend and when he didn’t answer, she let out a ringing laughter.

“Look at her and tell me what you see. Don’t be frugal on the details.”

Natasha knew what had happened at that party in Moldova, he hadn’t hidden the truth from her. He had told her every detail–or  _almost_  every detail, for some things are better kept private–and this was how she knew of the boner he got when his mind when back there.

“I see a wolf in sheep’s skin,” he muttered. He wanted to refill his drink, leave his spot by the window wall to avert his gaze from the woman of his nightmares and from his friend hitting on her, but he couldn’t bring himself to move.

Nat hit his shoulder. “Jesus, Clint! This is  _exactly_  how she tricked you in Chișinău! She studies her targets in ways that go beyond what a mission file says. She grows under their skin and when they least expect it, she strikes. KGB agents aren’t stupid; they didn’t die because they were too stupid to see what was coming. They  _knew_  what was coming because  _every single one of them_  knows why she’s called The Mantis.” She turned to glance at her friend, who was now laughing at something Sam said and she smirked. “Take that laughter, for example.”

Clint followed her gaze and focused on Larisa once again.

“What do you think it means?”

“That she’s having fun? That Sam cracked one of his stupid jokes?”

Natasha shook her head with a chuckle. “It’s all a play. She’s on stage and she’s delivering just what the audience wants to see.” She handed Clint her drink and let him have a sip. “It’s not Sam’s attention she’s trying to catch and from what I’m seeing,” she continued, turning to look him up and down, “she’s not failing.”

Clint’s brows furrowed slightly and it took him a moment to meet Natasha’s gaze.

“She’s just as wet for you as you’re hard for her,” she said with a shrug of her shoulders and he almost choked on her whiskey.

“What?” he coughed. “I’m not-”

“Black pants are great at hiding bulges, but they don’t hide them  _completely_.”

He had to do his best not to look down and not to cover himself with a hand. Instead, he shot Natasha a burning glare as she kept on chuckling.

“She’s playing you and you haven’t even noticed.” There was a moment of silence between the two of them as their attention slowly but surely drifted back to the woman in question. “I’ll show you,” Nat went on, moving to lean against the cool window behind them. He followed suit and only then did she speak again. “She’s flirty, you see? Her stance, the way she tilts her head, how her lips linger on the rim of her glass. Her hand has slid down Sam’s arm a little, have you noticed?”

He hadn’t. He hadn’t noticed. He had been occupied by far more nagging thoughts to notice her hand wasn’t where she first put it.

“I’m sure Sam thinks this show is all for him. After all, her leg is pressing a little too boldly between his and the straps of her dress have slid along her shoulders a little more to reveal more cleavage. Her hand is slowly but surely following a precise path and before long, it’s going to be resting on his side.”

“You see all this in her stance?” Clint questioned, bringing the glass to his lips once again.

“I’ve seen her play this game plenty of times.” She shrugged. “Tonight’s different, though.”

“Why so?”

“She’s playing a double game,” she grinned. When she looked at her friend and saw his attention was still fully on the woman on the other side of the room, she chuckled. “She might be leaning closer to Sam than you would deem appropriate, but if you look closely, her body’s slightly turned our way. Now study her and tell me what she’s showing us.”

Clint sighed. This was a game he wasn’t in the mood to play. And to be fair, he hadn’t been in the mood for games for a while now. Larisa’s presence at SHIELD wasn’t exactly a secret: he had been the one who had brought her to Fury and he and Natasha had been the people who granted her a stay in the organization. Enemy spy or not, it was clear that she had skills, skills they might need and that would sure be useful in any mission they would put her on.

At the same time, it wasn’t a secret that Natasha had started to secretly spend time with her old friend, despite the prohibitions that had been put into place six years ago, when Fury finally released Larisa Goncharova from her cell. She never brought him along, despite knowing what she knew, and he had never asked. He had felt like he needed to get Larisa out of his system, and even more so when she had played him not once, but  _twice_ , but now that he had finally met her again…

Nat nudged him in the ribs and he was back to the present moment. “So?”

He swallowed.

“Tell me what she’s showing  _you_.”

He would have blushed had his friendship with Natasha not been this close. “Her leg,” he said.

“What about her leg?”

“This is a stupid game.”

“It won’t sound this stupid when you’ll see her play it to trick someone else.”

“Fine,” he grunted. “Bare leg; she’s probably flexing her quad a little to show a more defined line. I think I can see the nude color of her panties.”

“It’s a thong,” Nat whispered in his ear and he shivered.

He moved his weight from one foot to the other, trying to ignore the stubborn constriction of his pants in his crotch area, and took another sip from her drink to choke the enthusiasm that was slowly making his body temperature rise. “She’s showing off her ankle and her foot, exploiting the line created by the high heel.”

“That’s right, Sherlock.” Nat nodded, but he didn’t notice such a movement. “Her legs have always been one of her best cards. After years of ballet, I guess she still knows how to use them to her advantage…” She grabbed her glass from Clint’s rigid fingers and took a sip. “Now let your gaze ride up.”

She had a thin, golden arm ring hugging the middle of her left bicep and for some reason, it was a jewel he had been trying his damn hardest to avoid all night. “The arm ring shows off her muscles.”

“But it still accentuates her delicacy and elegance,” Nat nodded in agreement. “What about her hands?”

“She’s not holding the flute by its stem.”

“What’s your reaction to it?”

He turned his head toward her. “I’m pretty sure you already know since you saw what’s going on between my legs,  _Nat_.”

“You think I’m not dripping in my panties?” She snorted, amusement glinting in her sly eyes. “Which, by the way, I’m glad I wore. But now think of her as a posing mannequin and continue. How’s she holding that flute?”

Clint suppressed a sigh and turned the focus of his attention back on the former assassin in front of him. “She’s playing with it,” he guessed after a while. “She’s holding it close to the rim with just her fingertips so that she can move it around more freely. She’s… distracting Sam with its movement?” He saw Natasha nod from the corner of his eye and he went back at scrutinizing the Mantis. “The other hand looks light on his side, it…” He groaned. “This is so stupid,” he said and huffed, massaging his forehead with stiff fingers. “That’s the only physical contact on her part, so I guess it is to keep him grounded.”

“It’s making him believe she’s interested in his lame jokes,” Nat laughed, muttering a ‘poor Sam’ right after. “When you receive the training  _we_  received, you learn how to focus on more than one thing at a time. She’s aware of everything or  _close to_  everything in this room right now. She knows we’re staring and as a matter of fact, she’s opened her legs a little wider, pushing back on her right leg so that her left is more on display. Obviously, she’s aware of Sam talking to her, otherwise, she wouldn’t be answering back. She’s sensible to social norms and all that jazz, so she’s lulling both herself and Sam with the flute she’s lazily sipping from. She likes the background music, and if you notice…”

She gave him the time to give Lara a closer look before allowing him to finish her sentence. “Her head is tilted to the right and upward.”

“Yep,” she grinned. “She’s allowing the music to be the background of Sam’s words as she half-looks at him. She’s showcasing her neck this way and Sam is perfectly aware of it. And you are, too, even if maybe unconsciously. She has you both wrapped around her pinky.”

Clint stared at her long and hard, and the more his eyes roamed agent Goncharova’s body, the deeper he fell under her spell. His gaze followed the line of her throat, and his attention got caught by the lights reflecting on the line of diamonds hanging from her earlobe. It slid lower, then, down the column of her neck, the same neck he had taken his sweet time marking back in that Moldovan mansion.

“No necklace,” Natasha pointed out, snapping him out of his reverie once again. “This way, neck and cleavage are the focal point of any gaze that falls onto her. This is why she chose the low neckline of that dress. I’m pretty sure Sam is thinking about letting his mouth kiss and lick all that exposed skin. I mean,  _I_  would!” Her chuckle mirrored Clint’s before both fell into a comfortable silence that lasted a couple of minutes. “Now tell me about her tits.”

He gasped, turning to look at the woman by his side for a moment before turning his attention back to the scene they were analyzing.

“Don’t be shy, Barton. I know you’ve been staring at them the whole night.”

“No bra,” and he gulped.

“Why do you think so?”

“I can…” He closed his eyes shut for a moment, breathed hard, and then opened them again. “I can see her nipples.”

“They’re hard,” Nat pointed out, voice deep and smooth.

He fixed his tie, a thing he had been doing all night ever since he had spotted  _her_. “Yeah. Might be cold.”

“Or turned on,” Natasha pressed. “But I’m ready to bet it’s because she’s both horny  _and_  chilly because of the air conditioner. And if you can see them from here, try and imagine what clever Sam is staring at.”

He followed Sam’s gaze and sure enough, when he wasn’t looking at her in the eye, his eyes couldn’t but fall back down on her chest. Even from this distance, Clint could see the outline and shape of her breasts, the way they swelled under that champagne-colored silk, the way the base of her flute seemed to dance across her silk-covered breast.

“This is like Chișinău all over again,  _but worse_ ,” Nat murmured in his ear. “At least you had the chance to finger her back there…”

His head snapped to the side and he glared at her. “C’mon, don’t be a bitch, Nat…”

She laughed, amusement radiating off her whole body. “There’s one more detail you haven’t told me about, yet,” she continued when she finally calmed down. She pointed at her friend with the forefinger of the hand that was holding her glass and waited for him to answer.

With a sigh, Clint went back to the task at hand, stealing Nat’s drink for a last sip, the ice cubes clinking against his teeth. But the longer he stared at Larisa, the more lost he got. He made a mental list of what they had already gone through–bare leg, flexed quad, perked nipples, showcased shoulders, displayed cleavage… And even though he was focusing his hardest–not an easy task since all he wanted to do was walk up to her and slap her ass, whose curve was perfectly outlined by the dress she was wearing–, he couldn’t find anything.

“She’s staring at us,” Nat eventually confessed. “Well, she’s staring at  _you_ , Casanova. From the corner of her eye, look closely. All night, she hasn’t lost sight of you not even once.”

Clint swallowed hard–and slow, his eyes trailing up Larisa’s body and focusing on the side of her face. Her smirk grew wider and a heartbeat later, she had turned her head in his direction a little more, eyes twinkling in amusement and something more.

He stared as her hand, the one she had used to touch Sam, moved to her hair in the mock attempt to fix some loose strands behind her ear, head tilting downward when her clear objective was another one. Fingers dancing across her skin, she trailed a line down the side of her neck, the side of her chest, following the swell of her breast before hesitating on her hip, where the slit of her dress revealed the nude color of the strip of her thong.

“Now, now, Hawkeye.” Natasha’s voice tickled his ear when she murmured against his skin, awaking goosebumps on the side of his neck. “Wouldn’t want to come in your pants, now, would you?”

He was snapped back to reality, then, and swiftly took a step back from her as she let out an amused laughter, mischief glinting in her eyes like the light on Larisa’s earring. “Christ, Romanoff!”

“Look, I’m just trying to help two friends out, here,” she giggled, raising her hands, one still holding her glass, in mock surrender. “I know things you don’t,” she went on and the tone of her voice took on an aura of mystery and mischief.

“Oh, yeah? You sure I don’t know what you’re talking about?” He wanted to play her game, and  _desperately_  so, but it was clear to both of them that he didn’t have the slightest idea of what she was talking about.

Natasha nodded, moving a foot in front of the other and pushing her back off the window wall, her butt still pressed against the cool glass. Her gaze fell to the ground for a second before it met his again with renewed naughtiness and she took a step forward. “Let’s play a game.”

“You gonna saw my arm or leg?” Clint snorted. Part of him wanted to walk away, but another part of him, the same part of him that had allowed Larisa to win their match in Chișinău, wanted to stay. He wanted to see for himself what his friend was talking about, wanted to know the secrets she had apparently been holding behind his back.

It somehow stung to know that she kept some–little–things from him, but even then, it was more than normal. He would have probably been more surprised by the contrary. Friendship or not, he still had some things he didn’t feel like spilling to her, too.

He let Natasha move him around until he was facing Larisa.

“I want you to stare at her,” Nat said, standing behind him and slightly to his right. “Don’t move, just listen to me going, okay?”

He shrugged and didn’t answer. It felt like an innocent enough game, so he complied.

“She’s inside your mind,” Natasha spoke again after a while, hands gripping his shoulders and giving them a gentle squeeze. “I know it. I’m sure Moldova was your favorite mission.”

Clint snorted and shook his head, amused.

“I know the things you’ve done with her name on your lips.”

He unconsciously tensed then, his mind going back to the many nights, most of all at the beginning, after the fiasco in Chișinău and the success in Hungary, he had spent with his dick in his hand. It had been the first time a woman had slipped underneath his skin like that, the first time a woman had left him craving for more even though she had been a target to take down.

And so, he had come with her name on his lips many a time. It had wound down with time, sure, but good Lord…

He had had his suspects about Natasha knowing: there had been times where she simply threw him knowing glances, but she had never said a word, not before tonight. In the safety of his own hand, he had spent  _years_  thinking that to be his best-kept secret, and to now find out it wasn’t, was almost unsettling.

But the thing was, he had also walked in on Nat masturbating, too, so it wasn’t a taboo, not to them, not after the missions they had been sent on together.

“What you don’t know, though,” and he felt her move from his right to his left, her lips always millimeters from his ear, “is that she’s done the same.”

 _Christ_.

Had someone asked him, Clint wouldn’t have been able to say why he kept that game going. He probably wanted to see how it went, how it  _ended_ , even though the pulsing in his crotch tried its best to pry him away from that room and into the privacy of a bathroom.

“She has touched herself plenty of times,” Natasha resumed, her hands sliding down his back and making him shiver. “I know because she and I don’t keep these things a secret between us, never have and never will.” A chuckle and then one of her hand squeezed his left buttcheek harshly, startling him. “She’s been replaying the things that happened at that party over and over  _and over again_.”

Just then, Larisa glanced at him again and Clint found himself swallowing a gasp as Natasha’s fingers trailed along the underside of his buttcheek. Larisa smirked, almost knowingly, and Sam had to call her name a couple of times to gain her attention back. She never fully returned it, though, and Clint knew because he saw her keep her gaze on him from the corner of her eye.

“I’m sure her fingers never feel like yours,” Nat continued, lips ghosting behind the shell of his ear. “Yours are calloused from archery and training, while she keeps her skin soft like that of a baby. She’s always liked it a little rough, though, and oh boy, the way you fucked her up that night…” She sighed against his neck. “She usually doesn’t remember the men she lures or kills, they’re just faded faces in the back of her mind, but you…  _Jesus Christ_ , Barton, she’s never forgotten your ugly mug.”

“Fuck you, Romanoff.”

“I’m sure Lara would like it better if you fucked  _her_ ,” she chuckled, hand slipping between his legs and lightly teasing the underside of his crotch. “Haven’t you been dreaming about this for ten years, now? Because fuck, she has.”

She moved away from him then. One second she was pressing herself up behind him, the next she was standing by his side, a devious smirk stretching her red-tinted lips.

He glared at her.

“What?” She shrugged, finally finishing the last sip of whiskey and bending to leave her glass on the floor. “I thought you could use a hand,” she grinned. “Obviously not yours, since you seem to only be able to use it to jerk off at the thought of her.”

“You are the worst friend  _ever_ ,” he groaned, turning around to fix the crotch of his pants. He felt himself straining against them and he wasn’t proud to say that if only Natasha had kept up on her stupid, silly game, he would have come right then and there as it had almost happened in Moldova with Larisa.

She laughed and he scoffed at the sound. “You’re not gonna say that again in a second,” she whispered in his ear before Sam’s voice started to ring closer and closer.

When Clint turned around, his inhalation hissed in the lively air of the party: Larisa and Sam were standing in front of him. It was the closest he had been to her tonight and he could smell the flowery notes of her perfume when Nat pulled her even closer for a hug.

Lara never broke the eye contact she had with him and he felt his mouth go dry.

“Fuck, Sam!” Natasha squealed just then, moving past both her friends to join the newly-come man. “I need your help.” She didn’t give him the time to answer, question or react: she grabbed him by his arm and tugged him away from both Hawkeye and the Mantis.

Larisa and Clint stood a step from each other and they both stared as their mutual friend dragged the poor guy that had tried to hit on the new girl for the whole night away. It was only because they never lost sight of Natasha that they saw her turn around from the safety of the other end of the room and wink.

Clint lost all his chill, then, and simply stood there in silence, not knowing what to say or what to do. Lara was staring at him, studying the features of his face, the scratch that was still healing on the side of his neck, and then her gaze slid lower, down the tightness of his shirt and suit jacket before it landed between his legs.

He didn’t miss her smirk, nor the hissing sound she made from her nose when she held her breath.

“Lovely party,” she hummed after a while and his eyes snapped up to meet hers. Those were the same words he had spoken to her that night. “Isn’t it?”

“Delightful.”

She smiled at that, a sweet smile that went beyond the ruthless killer he knew she was. She almost felt more… normal with her lips stretched like that. She looked like a woman he could find anywhere–on the bus, around the compound, at the movies,  _in his bed_. That was the reason why he found himself smiling back, eyes trailing down her face and to her chest. Her nipples were still peaked, he noticed, and he subconsciously stretched his neck to the side as he tried to convince himself to pry his eyes away from that sight.

She cleared her voice then and she smirked when a light blush spread on his cheeks. He looked away.

“No need to be shy,  _Clint_ ,” she moaned, taking a step closer and stopping right before him, their chests a breath away from touching. “It’s not like you haven’t already done far dirtier things to me than staring at my tits.”

Clint looked down at her and from such a close proximity, he could stare right through her dress and down the valley between her breasts.

“I’m sorry I had to hit you,” she went on, her breath tickling the skin of his throat, reminiscing that summer night of a decade ago.

He was suddenly suffocating in his suit and he had to do his damndest not to loosen the knot of his tie. “Yeah, it hurt like a bitch.”

She shot him a sheepish smile and shrugged. “I had someone to kill and you had decided to sneak up on me to pry me away…”

“You told me not to stop,” he bit back. His right hand had a mind of its own when it moved to the slit of her dress. He caressed her bare thigh, unconcerned by the people that could see him before he trailed his fingers higher up and hooked them underneath the band of her thong. He gave it a pull

She leaned closer and his hand slipped underneath the front of her lingerie, fingertips swiping over smooth skin–just like Natasha had said. “Who said I regret it?” she whispered in the crook of his neck, lips grazing his skin.

He gasped then, both at the heat radiating from her mouth and from his own hand slipping lower inside her panties and between her folds.

She was fucking dripping.

**Author's Note:**

> Feedback is always appreciated (most of all because I'm super scared every time I write for a new fandom haha)!


End file.
